I used to believe that spectator sports were a way of channeling the mob's inherent violence into vicarious forms of conflict. "Supporting" a team means joining a sort of artificial tribe, comprised of that team's fans. You signal your membership in the tribe by wearing the team colors, chanting the team chant, and despising rival tribes. The teams on the field play out a ritualized battle in which one side wins and the other loses, with more or less actual violence and possibility of injury, depending on the sport.

Unfortunately, nowadays the tribes no longer leave the battle to the teams on the field. While in England for my MBA residential school, I had time one evening to do my usual hotel thing: flipping channels on the TV. One program showed a town's preparations for a football (soccer) match. A trainload of fans were met at the station by mounted police in riot gear - even the horses had plastic shields over their eyes. The crowd was escorted off the train, with mounted police leading, and more walking alongside. The road from the station to the arena was lined on both sides with police, standing shoulder to shoulder in flourescent yellow jackets; the visiting fans had to walk straight along the road to the arena.

Inside the arena, a police chief remarked to the TV crew that there were 100 seats unsold for the match, so they would be able to create a buffer zone between the opposing fans. I didn't stay with the program to see what happened, but later on saw footage of rowdy fans (faces electronically blotched out) being dragged away by police.

Some games in Milan involve similar preparations: busloads of police arrive well before the match begins, and are presumably dispersed throughout the stadium to maintain order. For games when certain nationalities of foreign fans are expected, the mayor orders all bars nearby not to serve beer after a certain time.

If I were a housebreaker, crime boss, etc., I'd be delighted to know that I could get on with my trade in peace during football games, when the bulk of a city's police force are busy keeping the fans from killing each other.

However, I am only a taxpayer, wondering how much all this is costing me. Is football worth the cost to society, even for those who care about the sport? A few years ago, in an effort to curb stadium violence, the then-minister of sport in Italy threatened to have the games played in empty stadiums, viewable only on TV. How is it "sport" when we must go to such lengths to prevent the audience getting hurt?

The whole concept of "supporting a team" seems very artificial to me. I can understand rooting for one's national team during the Olympics or the World Cup - at least you have a passport in common with them, and perhaps a language, culture, and history (although the increasing phenomenon of athletes migrating, to countries where they can be better supported for an Olympic bid, or get a spot on a less-exalted team, calls that into question). In a sense, you are cheering your country's ability to produce good players - there are worse national traits to celebrate.

But it's rare for a "local" professional football team to have a single player from the city that they supposedly represent - many of the players won't even be from the same country. So, when we cheer for AC Milan, what are we applauding? Berlusconi's ability to buy good players? Given the mysteries shrouding the origin of his personal fortune, this is not something that makes me cheerful. Still less do I feel that football is worth getting violent about, unless maybe I could beat up Berlusconi.

Feb 9, 2003

I wrote the above a few days ago, inspired by the TV show I saw in the UK. Today Milan's two home teams, AC Milan and Inter, are playing each other in Milan's famous San Siro stadium. We saw six large buses and assorted other vehicles full of police heading that way. Then, as we entered the metro station at Piazzale Lotto (closest stop to the stadium), we were suddenly confronted with several dozen riot-geared police. We had had the ill luck and bad timing to arrive just as a subway train pulled in, carrying fans of both teams. To avoid trouble, they had been put into separate cars, with police escort. The police cordoned off the station so that one group was forced to wait while the other group exited, each side singing rude songs and shouting slogans at the others. The rowdies were, predictably, young men, but the groups included women, and some confused and frightened looking children. The rest of us stood and waited until both packs of idiots had left the station.

Sports Fanatics

Mar 11, 2003

My last two pieces, on fan violence and dyed hair, between them spurred more discussion than anything I've yet written in this newsletter. With the permission of the authors, I will quote some of their very thoughtful replies, with further thoughts of my own.

American readers are baffled by the need for the safety measures at soccer games, and, as John Francini says, "look upon the tribal behavior of European soccer fans with an unalloyed mixture of dismay, confusion, and stark blinking incomprehension. While there are rare occasions where Americans will do stupid things in the aftermath of a football game (like the idiots who rampaged through the streets of Oakland after the Raiders got thoroughly trounced in last month's Superbowl), by and large fans of two opposing teams do not go around taunting one another en masse with songs, chants, et cetera. Nor do they beat each other up, even if the Raiders fans do dress themselves up in the most outrageous getups. And they certainly don't need to be separated by team, as soccer fans seem to."

John asked: "Just what are the common sports in Europe besides soccer, and how popular are they in comparison to it? Here, we have several different sports to pay attention to during the year, so American football is just one of many: baseball in the spring and summer, football in the autumn, basketball and hockey in the late fall and winter."

He’s got a point. The sports that John mentions are pretty much equally important in America, and all of them are played in major national leagues. Many Americans are knowledgeable and passionate about more than one sport. Europeans don’t have so many to choose from. Aside from soccer, there's cricket and rugby (in the UK); I don't know much about these, but suspect that their fan bases are not nearly as large as for soccer. In Italy, we have a basketball league, but its fan base is very, very small. Perhaps having more sports to think about keeps Americans from becoming dangerously obsessed with one sport and one team.

Rich Levin raised an interesting point: "The US is usually criticized for a more violent culture: movies, TV, etc. and the higher crime rates. But you never see anything equivalent at sporting events. Maybe we take our violence more seriously in the US."

Some American sports, e.g. football and hockey, seem to be inherently more violent than soccer, although this is to some extent the ritualized violence that I mentioned before (wrestling is even more ritualized, apparently). Perhaps these sports are therefore more effective at venting fan violence vicariously than is soccer.

In "Bowling for Columbine," his documentary film about American gun culture, Michael Moore ponders the opposite phenomenon: why is it that America's neighbor, Canada, has similar gun ownership rates, yet a far lower incidence of gun murders than the US?

Several readers made the explicit link (which I had not) between ardent sports fandom and religious belief (John Sanders reminds me that 'fan' derives from 'fanatic'). Rick Freeman points out that both seem to be a mystery to me. He's right about that; I am profoundly atheistic about sports and religion. Though I feel no need for either in my own life, I appreciate that sports and/or religion contribute a great deal to others' lives. But I find it sad and baffling that something which is beautiful and inspiring for many, in the hands of a few fan(atic)s is used, often brutally, against non-believers or members of opposing faiths.

Stadium violence is once again on the collective mind in Italy. A newscast quantified the problem apallingly: maintaining order in the stadiums costs 32 million Euros per major match. A new law has been passed making it possible to arrest hooligans on the basis of photo or TV evidence - if they can be caught within 36 hours of the incident. The law also provides for changing schedules, or completely suspending games for up to a month, in response to anything unusually horrible.

Cricket Fanatics

Mar 13, 2003

My friend and Woodstock classmate Yuti Bhatt responds to the articles on sports fans:

The section on Sports Fanatics is interesting in light of the fact that more than a billion people at this very moment are engrossed in a series of games being played over a period of 43 days in South Africa.

I am talking about the Cricket World Cup. Cricket is played by a handful of countries, yet the World Cup 2003 has the largest number of spectators (both on and off the field) of any sporting event ever, barring the FIFA [Soccer] World Cup. Even more than the Olympics. I am sure you have experienced the passion and fanaticism that cricket evokes in India, and even at Woodstock, dorm staff are being lenient about lights-out, so that the kids can watch the late-night games.

An average-sized stadium in India holds up to 40,000 spectators, and at Eden Gardens in Calcutta, cricketers play to crowds numbering 120,000 (not counting those perched on surrounding tree-tops and buildings). In spite of these numbers, spectator violence in cricket is rare. In "white" countries, one section of the stadium has no stands or seats. In its stead is a patch of green, where families can lay out their mats and picnic baskets, drink beer, watch the game, and even have a nap in the afternoon. So what if the game being played is between West Indies and Sri Lanka. Your neighbour could be an Aussie or a Kiwi whose favourite batsman is Sachin Tendulkar [an Indian cricket star]. Often described as "the game of glorious uncertainties" and mirroring "life itself", about one-fifth of the world is right now looking forward to 23rd March when the Finals take place. Yesterday, there was a minor revolt in a prison here, because the prisoners wanted a TV to watch the games. Happily for India, we are on a roll, and have secured our slot in the Semi-Finals. The most likely scenario will be an India-Australia Final.

I responded to Yuti: "I thought I read something while I was in Delhi about fan unruliness at cricket, something about throwing water bottles onto the pitch?"

Yuti answered: "Yes, there have been incidents of fans throwing stuff, not on the pitch, but on fielders near the boundaries. It happened in India last year and also in Australia. A star player usually asks the crowd to behave, and that often does the trick. But in the 1996 World Cup, a match was awarded to Sri Lanka purely because of the Calcutta crowd's misbehaviour. We were losing and they just couldn't stomach that. The umpires summarily declared Sri Lanka the winners. The International Cricket Council can even ban a venue for a few years if its spectators make a habit of misbehaving. So far as I know, that hasn't happened yet." 

Sports

Jan 31, 2006

Listening to a conversation on the train, it appears that we missed the passing of the Olympic torch in Lecco this weekend. Oh, well. Even had we been paying attention, we were snowed in at home, and it would have been a difficult walk to get downtown to see it, let alone back up the hill.

The same gentleman on whom I'm eavesdropping went on to say that he might consider taking his sports-mad young son to a minor game of the (soccer) World Cup in Germany this summer - any game involving teams whose fans will be largely unable to attend. It's a sad commentary on the state of soccer that ordinary people dare not go to games involving teams known to have dangerously violent fans. Soccer itself is a fairly safe game (compared, say, to American football), but being a soccer fan nowadays is blood sport.